


Threads

by solarwitchwrites



Category: Black Clover - 田畠裕基 | Tabata Yuki
Genre: Introspection, Multi, Not Beta Read, Present Tense, Red String of Fate, spoilers for chapter 140
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 12:11:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17528471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarwitchwrites/pseuds/solarwitchwrites
Summary: Vanessa is a stitch witch. She is the best stitch witch of her generation, possibly in an age. But she has one power she doesn’t brag about: she can see the threads of fate that bind destined souls together. It’s rarely been useful, often it’s painful; but sometimes she gets to watch something amazing unfold.





	Threads

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of weird and meta, critique encouraged, especially as the tenses got kind of confusing for me.

Sometimes, especially right on the edge of tipsy and drunk, Vanessa thinks about fate, and threads.

When Vanessa was little, she didn’t know that not everyone could see the threads. She learned very quickly not to say anything, but the damage was done. By the end of it, Vanessa had been called a liar multiple times, broken a girl’s heart, exposed an affair, and landed herself in a tower. After that, it was easy to learn how to hold her tongue; she had no one to talk to. But she still saw them, when other witches flew by her tower.

Magic threads that stretch between souls. Most people have one; a rare few have two. None of them are exactly alike. For the most part, they are beautiful, shining things that speak of love, of friendship, of family. Sometimes Vanessa can tell; sometimes the thread itself seems undecided as to what it should be. On rare occasions, though, the threads are twisted, dark and barbed, and Vanessa hopes the souls involved never met.

Watching the world through a window, sometimes Vanessa hated everyone she saw with a thread. They were a promise, that someplace out there was a person just for them. But Vanessa was alone. She had no thread that she could see. Sometimes, channeling her power to its limits, she thought she felt a tug on her heart, but she could never pin it down. She spent her days between desperate hope and despair.

Then Yami Sukehiro blew a hole in her tower.

Life with the Bulls is different. Better. But even as she learned how to open up to others again, she kept her secrets close. Some habits are hard to break. Besides, it isn’t like the threads are always useful. They fade from her vision the farther she gets from their source, for one thing; unless both parties involved are in the same room, it’s impossible to tell who’s connected to who. And after years of watching, she’d learned that some people never met the person on the other end of their string.

Of course, she is the only one who knows that the connection is there. Those with unresolved threads seem happy enough. They can’t miss what they don’t know, right? Vanessa hopes so.

Yami’s thread is bright red, tied around his left little finger. It’s beautiful. But no matter where in the Clover Kingdom the Black Bulls find themselves, it always leads due east. Vanessa hopes her captain never finds out about the soulmate waiting for him in a homeland he can never return to.

Grey and Charmy have no threads; neither does Gordon, which is probably sadder, because the man clearly wants to be connected to someone. Finral... Vanessa has worried about Finral since the moment she met him. His thread, a sickly blue-black, binds tight around the fingers of both hands, tight enough that she's sure it would cut off circulation if he could feel it. Sometimes she has the irrational certainty that he does, that it makes the strain his powers put on his hands even worse.

It makes her blood boil because she knows who is on the other end. Langris' side of the bond is light and warm, and it loops gently over his shoulders like a brother's embrace. Vanessa has never found a way to cut the threads, but sometimes she wishes she could.

Gauche has two. One is blindingly obvious, as bright and pure as one of his own reflect rays, stretching from his heart to Marie's no matter the distance between. The other is a sly thing, so thin Vanessa took days to notice it. But her powers are not so easily fooled. It might hide in the brightness of Gauche's love for his sister, but Gauche's second thread is as strong as diamond. Vanessa is eagerly awaiting that meeting, because Gauche discovering that he can love someone else as much as his sister... well, Vanessa's willing to bet those are going to be some _fireworks_.

Then there's the entrance exam when Yami comes home with two newbies in tow, and Vanessa grins as they immediately start bickering, because the thread between them is alive with light. It sparks and smokes, flickering between fire and lightning, and too bright and wild for her to tell if it's platonic or romantic. She settles herself in for years of entertainment as Magna and Luck figure themselves out.

The new base comes with a new member. Henry is bedridden most of the time, but when Vanessa looks carefully, a bond is there. It’s white and wispy like his hair, and she memorizes the look of it. She’s never found a match this way, but she hopes that if she sees the other end of Henry’s thread on her travels she’ll recognize it. 

Then Yami's eye for unusual people manages to top itself. Vanessa takes one look at the new kid, then blinks and assesses how drunk she is. Not enough to be seeing double, she decides... or quintuple. Because the new kid, Asta, has five bonds. Vanessa has never seen anyone with more than two.

Vanessa laughs, and pours herself another drink. Giggles even more when Yami's second newbie finally shows herself, all snobby royal mask and hidden insecurities, a shining bond like sunlight on water connecting her to Asta even as she tries to sneers at him.

The other four she hasn't figured out yet, but this is too good to rush. Three of them tend to move together, and Vanessa wonders if they're connected to each other as well as to Asta; she's seen it before, a trio of little witches who used to play outside her tower. She remembers watching them, each girl with two bonds leading to the others. Sitting inside the Black Bulls' base with a drink in one hand and the chaos of her squad mates around her, the bitter envy she remembers feels distant, unimportant. It makes her smile.

And every time she follows Yami’s order to surpass her limits, the tug on her own heart grows stronger.

Someday, Vanessa is sure, she’ll find her soulmate on the other end. But even closer to her heart is the knowledge that, even if she doesn’t, she’ll never be alone again.

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: [THERE'S ART!](https://www.instagram.com/p/B3ZZ3XCF4Zy/?igshid=5vyluwgw72fb) Go look at Nako13yeh's Vanessa, she's super pretty. Best stitch witch indeed!
> 
> And now, the author’s notes, which in this case are almost as long as the fic…
> 
> Yami: I actually ship him with several canon characters but I couldn’t pass up the angst and the symbolism of him having an actual red string of fate.
> 
> Grey, Charmy, Gordon: Statistically, some of them had to have no threads, and I don’t have any strong ships for those three, so. Sorry Gordon!
> 
> Finral: Got stuck representing both familial and unhealthy bonds. He’s probably my favorite character, so I wind up being mean to him…
> 
> Gauche: While I do crackship Gauche and Mars, I left it ambiguous because I mostly just agree with Vanessa: Gauche discovering he can care about other people in a way that even approaches the strength of his love for Marie would make his head explode.
> 
> Magna and Luck: The ship that got me into the show. The first thing I saw was their fight with Vetto, after which I knew I had to backtrack and watch the rest of it and find the manga. This fic, with the exception of Henry, was meant to be pretty canon friendly, but those two having a thread fit pretty well for that, which is why they’re here and my other OTP (FinYami) didn’t make the cut.
> 
> Henry: Even though the ‘present tense’ of this fic is set around when Asta joins the Bulls, Henry is mentioned. Why? Because him being a secret doesn’t make any sense. My gut says that the mangaka made him up to get the Bulls out of a tight spot with the base attack, but then had to have a reason he wasn’t there earlier. However, his magic drain thing doesn’t work as a reason, since they spend the next several dozen chapters hanging out and fighting with him without a problem.
> 
> But in this case, shoddy plotting created a canon where a disabled person was bedridden in isolation for years, even when other people were right there who could have been there for him. That’s… a deeply disturbing thing to have in a show on accident and with no commentary about it, and done by the heroes. 
> 
> Basically I have Thoughts about Henry, so I always AU it to him being known about from the get go.
> 
> Asta and Noelle: Probably gonna be the canon endgame. As for Asta’s other bonds, while not explicitly stated, I was imagining Yuno, Klaus, Mimosa (who typically stick together) and Leopold. Whether the bonds are platonic, a mix, or Asta winds up poly is up to the reader.


End file.
